Poor body posture has many harmful effects to one's health, for example, improper sitting posture leads to short reading distance and hence causes or worsens myopia; incorrect sitting posture is also a major root cause for neck pain, neck and shoulder muscle strain, as well as lower back pain. Besides the harms to health, poor body posture is also not desirable for aesthetic reasons, for example, habitual hunchback affects one's mannerism and confidence level. There is, therefore, a need for devices to correct poor body posture.
Poor body posture can be identified by six main conditions, namely, (1) habitual hunchback, (2) round (stooped) shoulders, (3) shoulder imbalance (one shoulder higher than another), (4) scoliosis (abnormal lateral curvature of the spine), (5) habitual forward head position, and (6) habitual lowered head position. Most posture correction devices correct and/or prevent (1) habitual hunchback and/or (2) round shoulders conditions, but very few correction devices correct and/or prevent (3) shoulder imbalance, (4) scoliosis, (5) habitual forward head position, and (6) habitual lowered head position.
Existing posture correction devices typically have structures comprising two elastic shoulder straps and a separate waist strap. The waist strap is fastened firmly around the waist of the wearer. There are generally two groups of designs, one in which non-adjustable elastic shoulder straps connected to a back strap are looped around the shoulders and the back strap is then connected to the waist strap, and another in which length adjustable elastic shoulder straps are stretched around the shoulders from a back strap and attached directly back to the waist strap. However, both design groups have certain shortcomings.
More particularly, designs with non-adjustable elastic shoulder straps do not allow adjustment for custom fitting on the body of individual users. Furthermore, if the two shoulder straps are not separately adjustable, the correction device can only generate outward pulling force to bring stooped shoulders backwards, but fails to generate separately adjustable downward pulling force to correct shoulder imbalance and/or scoliosis.
On the other hand, connecting adjustable elastic shoulder straps directly to the waist strap can result in excessive pulling forces causing the displacement of the waist strap, which subsequently results in loss of overall body posture correcting effect and also causes discomfort to the user.
A need therefore exists to provide a posture vest that addresses at least one of the above-mentioned problems.